Thomas Tyng, a principal with Reata Real Estate, is heading up the leasing for Terrell Plaza.

DDR’s announcement marks a major step toward breathing new life into a shopping center that dates back to the 1950s — to a time when Austin Highway served as a prime corridor between Austin and San Antonio.

DDR does not specify when Target will debut at Terrell Plaza, but it appears that work will be getting under way soon.

A request for bids was recently filed with the Builder’s Exchange of Texas — for a project involving demolition and site work at the Terrell Plaza shopping center, located at 1201 Austin Highway. The work is in preparation for the new “Target retail store at Terrell Plaza,” the bid states.

Submissions were due earlier this week.

Those familiar with the shopping center say that Target would be key to turning not only Terrell Plaza around — but to the larger revitalization efforts taking shape along Austin Highway.

“It will bring a lot more business to the area,” says Roger Arias, owner of well-known restaurant Earl Abel’s, which has been a tenant of the center for some five years.

Arias, however, is also looking at the impact Target could have a little closer to home: “It would do wonders for our business.”

According to the site plans filed with the Builder’s Exchange, the Terrell Plaza Target store will span roughly 135,000 square feet.

Those plans also highlight three buildings that are to be demolished to make way for Target.

Target would join a tenant line-up at Terrell Plaza that currently includes Earl Abel’s and Big Lots — which occupy roughly 38,000 and 10,000 square feet in one building, respectively. In the site plans, that building is not scheduled for demolition.

Builder’s Exchange puts the cost of the demolition/site work project at $1.5 million.

A fresh look

Target, says Arias and others, could give Terrell Plaza something it’s been missing for quite some time: A fresh look.

“Target will add a touch of class to an old inner-city (center) in need of more sophisticated shopping,” adds retail veteran Tom Rohde, who used to go to the Dick’s Hobby Shop that was once a tenant of the center, back in the early 1960s.

That sophisticated shopping is crucial to drawing out the consumers in the higher-income neighborhoods that surround the shopping center — including Alamo Heights and Terrell Hills, adds Rohde, who is vice president of locally based Rohde Ottmers Siegel Commercial & Investment Realtors.

Three of the major thoroughfares that make up the area, however — Austin Highway, Harry Wurzbach and Rittiman Road — got lost in the sprawl that drew retailers and other services to the suburbs.

But that’s changing.

New retail centers along the Austin Highway/Harry Wurzbach intersection have attracted major players like Lowe’s and Wal-Mart. H-E-B invested to create a newer and bigger grocery store — while the 78,000-square-foot box that it left behind was redeveloped into a multitenant center called Austin Heights.

The area also received a major boost from the 2005 BRAC initiative, which led to the creation of the Medical Education and Training Campus at Fort Sam Houston. Upon its debut later this year, METC will centralize the medical training and education missions of the Army, Navy and Air Force, and will bring some 11,000 new employees to the Northeast Side submarket.

That project has prompted new development along all three highways — including a multimillion-dollar redevelopment of the Sam Houston Center, which spans roughly 58,000 square feet along Austin Highway and Rittiman Road.

A new Target store, says District 10 City Councilman John Clamp, “further enhances the economic development.”

Future focused

The city is also doing its part to spur new development in the area, says Clamp, who has made the revitalization of all three corridors a prime focus of his tenure as a councilman. He points to a plan adopted by City Council in 2010. Known as the Inner City Reinvestment/Infill Policy (ICRIP), this program allows for the use of public initiatives to bring private development to long-overlooked areas of the city.

Among the list of areas singled out for these funds, the Austin Highway corridor.

“It’s a step-by-step approach,” says Clamp. “But when you concentrate on an area, good things can happen.”

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